Typhoid, cholera and other diseases carried in dirty water could be on the march in parched Burkina Faso after a regional body provided 2.5 billion CFA (US $4.8 million) to build 300 new wells.

Officials said the wells, being provided by the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) in the Centre South and Plateau Central regions of the landlocked country, would improve health and have a knock-on effect on the country's flagging economy.

In Plateau Central and Centre South, less than 60 percent of people currently have access to drinking water, according to Nouhoun Tanou, the spokesman for the ministry of water resources and agriculture, adding the new wells will increase access to 60,000 people.

"Water-born diseases are among the top five illnesses that put people in hospitals in Burkina Faso," Roger Tiendrebeogo, the director of the ministry of health's disease control unit, said.

"Typhus and other intestinal infectious diseases are often deadly for children," Tiendrebeogo said. Sewage getting into the drinking water was the cause of a cholera epidemic that hit peripheral areas in Ouagadougou in 2005, he added.

Part of the semi-arid Sahel belt that divides Saharan North Africa from the more tropical sub-Saharan region, Burkina Faso's mostly subsistence farmers rely on annual rains to feed their land and charge underground water sources.

"Drinking water means having healthy kids in schools and saving women time which they can better use to generate income," Joseph Martin Kabore, general director of a government agency for rural water management which will supervise the project when it starts in December said.

The 300 wells are the first of 3,000 to be funded in the next three years throughout the eight countries that make up WAEMU. The next projects will be in Mali and Niger. The estimated cost is 8 billion CFA (US $15.58 million).

"Our hope is to make drinking water available everywhere in our zone," Soumaila Cisse, WAEMU president, told IRIN.

Burkina Faso received 30 billion CFA (US $ 58.43 million) in 2005 from Denmark to boost construction of wells and sewerage throughout the country. The government has said it will allocate 10 percent of its budget to secure drinking water for the country's 13 million people.